(ethereal music) - How can I exist in this space and be able to be symbiotic and really, you know, soak up everything that it wants to teach me, instead of me trying to like, dominate?

Because really, Mother Nature wins every time.

And that's what survival is all about.

Making your situation better today than it was yesterday.

And I think I really look into like the Indigenous people in that area, like how have they been surviving and existing in this space for, for so many years?

- Max Djenohan is always pushing the boundaries in the outdoors, from snowboarding down volcanoes to traveling around the globe, participating in survivalist shows on TV like Naked and Afraid.

He has done it all.

Today I'm meeting him in Mount Baker, Snoqualmie National Forest to learn some basic survival skills.

- Hey, nice to meet you in real life.

- Let's do it.

- Let's do it.

Something I never done.

- Really?

(rhythmic music) Okay, check out these old-growth cedars here.

Wow.

And that was half the reason I wanted to come out here - Yeah.

- is because these cedars are the Tree of Life for the Indigenous people of the area.

Oh, looky here, looky here.

Chanterelle.

- Ooh.

Yum.

- That's a nice chanterelle mushroom right there.

So in a survival situation, we'd be looking around and be like, okay, what do we need to do?

There's like an order of operations.

So there's the big three is, uh, you can't go three hours without regulating your temperature, you can't go three days without water, and you can't go three, three weeks without food.

So, I mean, we obviously have puffies, but as soon as it gets cold down, these valleys, it'll be frigid.

So a perfect thing we're going to do right now is build like a debris shelter.

So it's kind of like a lean-to.

We build these ribs on there and then we'll fill it up with leaves.

And essentially make ourselves a sleeping bag.

- Let's do it.

- Let's do it.

I saw a spot over here that looks perfect.

Use these beautiful leaves for cover.

Like if you even just look right here.

This is wet and this is completely dry, right?

So we need to find a nice ridge pole.

It looks like some good down trees here.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

And there's actually a good amount of debris here already.

We're going to now put logs or sticks all the way up here.

- Okay.

- And our opening is going to be right here because then we'll have this tree as protection.

- I think I found one.

- Nice.

- Yeah.

(upbeat electronic music) Whoa.

- Nice.

Looking good, huh?

- This is legit.

Snug as a bug.

- Snug as a bug in a rug.

- (laughs) I love it.

- Yeah.

- I've always been in the outdoors, as long as I can remember from being in Africa, where my father is from, in the Cote d'Ivoire, next to Ghana, to when we moved to New York, running through Prospect Park, Central Park, and then to in Seattle, where we live like a block away from a place called Hamlin Park, which is this massive green space where I mean, I didn't realize how lucky I was growing up, that I've always had access to the outdoors.

And I think being a person of color in the outdoors, or being a person of color within a very White space, survival is just being able to exist in that space, right?

It doesn't need to be survival of just like literally, I have nothing.

I need to be able to try to blend in and be a chameleon, be able to learn and then apply that to how my lived experience is.

So it's it's not just survival within the outdoors, it's survival within this space.

Right?

- Yeah.

There's a big difference from being in the outdoors and becoming a survivalist and like ripping down volcanoes.

- Yeah.

- So how do you go from oh, I'm outside to... - Yeah, I guess it's just like a natural evolution, right?

You start one place of just being in the outdoors and then you're like, oh, maybe I'll just get up higher up on to that vantage point, and then you get to that vantage point and then you continually evolve like, why not?

Why wouldn't I do that?

I never, because I was never told I couldn't do it right?

- All right, so we have the shelter set up.

Stoked on that.

- Beautiful.

- That's going to keep us warm tonight.

But if we couldn't get warm from there, we're going to try to make a fire here.

And all that we have here, I foraged in the area.

But it's relatively easy to make an ember, but after you make an ember, you have to now bring it to fire.

So we have a spindle, and we have our bow, we have our hearth board, we have our base, base board right here.

And we're going to try to get our ember into just a little bit and then bring this to fire.

But once we bring that to fire, we're going to need subsequent larger and larger pieces.

- Got it.

- And then the final bit, they call it a feather stick.

Essentially, you're just going to feather these little pieces out because this stuff burns really, really easily.

Even though, like the San people and the Hadzabes, like are the people that created the entire survival cannon that we live to till this day.

- Right.

- Like friction fire and hand, hand drill was created by black people, Africans.

And we have used that to be able harness fire, to be able to be where we're at now.

So then here's the bow.

- Okay.

- That's why it's called a bow drill, because essentially you're putting the stick into a bow.

There we go.

And so in the beginning here, it's all about just getting yourself a nice pilot hole.

Yes.

Keep breathing.

Apply a little more pressure.

Try to get a little more speed here.

Come on.

Oh, I see a little ember right there.

Come on.

Got it.

You see a little ember right there?

- Oh, wow.

(blowing) - Wow.

That's crazy.

(blowing) Oh my God.

Wow.

- This is where the little sticks come in.

- See, this is magic.

This is.

(fire crackling) - Just think about being the first people to discover this.

(blowing) - Come on.

Almost there.

There it is.

- Beautiful.

- Wow.

- That's so wild.

I love being in your head.

Because when I walk into place, I'm like, all right, I'm here.

It's really pretty.

I'm not like, okay, where's the medicine?

Where's the... right?

Like, but it's cool to be so in touch with the place that you understand what it's talking to you, what it's giving you.

- Yeah, I think we were losing that right?

I think we're so stuck to our phones in the modern age of, like, comfort and, being able to have everything at your fingertips that we have, we've become so disconnected to our natural space.

And I think that's why we're in this global warming crisis where we've just pillaged everything around us and now we're, you know, we're seeing the ramifications of that.

All right well, we got L.N.T.

so we got to, like, tear this down before we get out of here because we're actually not sleeping in tonight.

I'm gonna pour some water on the fire so we don't step on it.

- Sweet.

- Put some dirt over the top of it.

- Okay.

- It's all about Leaving No Trace.

Just like that.

- That was so great.

I feel like a whole new woman.

(laughter) Like, leave me here.

(ethereal music) - It's primal.

We've been existing in the outdoors, living primitively for forever.

So it's like when you go outside, you're really going back home.

It just gets me fired up.

It makes me feel like I'm, like, vibrating at my highest frequency.